Line tries to ease traffic woes in giveaway

Staff writer, with CNA

Thu, Jul 25, 2013 - Page 3

The global mobile messaging service Line said yesterday it has taken action to ease the bottlenecks users have encountered trying to download free “stickers” being given out in celebration of a major milestone.

The developer on Tuesday said the app had reached the 200 million user mark on Sunday and it would thank users by allowing free downloads of popular “stickers” for chat messages that could be used for 180 days.

Many Taiwanese who tried downloading the stickers after the offer opened at 11am on Tuesday were unable to do so because of heavy traffic, media reports said.

Line Taiwan posted a notice on its Facebook account about 5pm on Tuesday saying that Taiwanese users would only be able to download the stickers from 1 pm yesterday.

“We did not expect such a boom in downloads after the campaign was launched simultaneously around the globe,” said Sting Tao, vice president of Line Taiwan.

“The free stickers will now be available in high-traffic areas by turns, and we are confident about handling these downloads in a single area at a time,” he said.

Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Hong Kong are the company’s highest traffic areas in Asia, he said.

Users can download “Brown and Cony’s Secret Date” stickers, as well as “Cony’s Happy Work Life,” “Moon: Mad Angry Edition,” and “Sally: Special Edition” over the next three days, the developer said.

Line, which provides free calls and messaging over the Internet, was launched in June 2011. It took 399 days for it to reach the 50 million user mark, compared with 1,096 days for Twitter and 1,325 days for Facebook.